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Goth Chick News: Ridley Scott Fans Rejoice

Goth Chick News: Ridley Scott Fans Rejoice

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image014Raise your hand if you’re a Ridley Scott fan.

Hands up now.

Okay, well that’s pretty much everyone so I’m probably about to make you all very happy.

For those of you who are less familiar with the offerings Scott is famous for, let me begin with a short history lesson.

In the recent past Ridley Scott was the director behind Robin Hood (the Russell Crowe version not that abomination with Kevin Costner), and Gladiator.  In the 90’s it was Thelma and Louise, and Black Rain.

But way back in the late 70’s and early 80’s Scott hit consecutive home runs with only his second and third directorial outings; Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982.

The sci-fi and horror genres would never be the same.

Both movies took place in the future. Yet very contrary to most depictions of snowy white flight decks and Jetson-like gadgetry, Scott’s future was grimy, inconvenient and crawling with things that wanted you dead.  Whether it was an erotic dancer who could crush your skull with her inner thighs or an eight-foot drooling crustacean that could eat off your face with not one but two protruding jaws, the movie-going-public was clearly scarred and addicted simultaneously.

The cult-of-Scott may not have been instantaneous but it was darn near close.

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Art of the Genre: Inteview with Daniel R. Horne

Art of the Genre: Inteview with Daniel R. Horne

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It’s Autumn here in L.A. which means a bit of rain slips into the forecast and the temperature falls to a frigid 55 degrees. Ryan Harvey likes to roll into our Redondo offices with a large coat, collection of Blu-ray discs in this arms and a smile on his face. It’s a good work if you can get it, and as I sat relishing the sun warming me from my beach-side window I got an all too familiar buzz from my receptionist’s desk.

Somehow, someway, there is a different kind of sound when Kandy transfers a call from John O’Neill to my office. I’d like to say it comes off more urgent, but instead I’m going to confess it feels more like evil…

Nonetheless, I picked up that phone and was greeted by the all too familiar vocal styling of our displaced Canadian Editor-in-Chief. After a handful of sentences, all finished with ‘aye’, I was directed to LAX for a flight to Philadelphia.

Normally I’d protest such an abrupt departure from sunny southern California for the northeast in November, but John always has a carrot well worth the trip. This time, I was crossing the Delaware River in reverse to George Washington’s famous sneak-attack as I slipped into New Jersey for a meeting with fantasy artist extraordinaire Daniel R. Horne.

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National Novel Writing Month—Whether You Like It Or Not

National Novel Writing Month—Whether You Like It Or Not

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nanowrimoI’ve discussed National Novel Writing Month before, and if you want the lowdown on this annual global community creative writing project to kick people to a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, you can read about it here. Today I come to you as a scarred old warrior observing the changes that can happen after a few consecutive years of participation. Not changes to me, but changes to the world that NaNoWriMo has created.

I have now been on the battlefront of NaNoWriMo for four years, which makes me a “veteran.” I’ve also “won” three years running, and with a current total of 22,000 words as of Day 7, it looks like I’ll rack up another victory this year, walking away with a PNG badge. And a finished manuscript, the best reward possible.

After the third year of participation, I discovered something, and that in turn has brought me a realization this year: the actual “rules” of NaNoWriMo are irrelevant. You no longer need to try to “write a new novel, starting from zero words, and reach 50,000 before the end of the month.” Since National Novel Writing Month isn’t a contest offering a prize, you can’t “do it wrong.” You can “cheat” on your word count on the official site—many do, I’m sure, since I’ve seen some impossible word counts—but that achieves nothing. There are other, creative ways to break the rules. You can choose to start writing a screenplay instead, or tackle short stories one after the other (as I did last year), or use the time to finish a novel you’ve already started (as I am doing this year). NaNoWriMo’s official term for anyone who does this a “Rebel.” It isn’t a pejorative term, but the welcome umbrella for anyone who wants to use November to kick their writing machines’ engine back to sputtering life. Every year, I find more people joining the ranks of the Rebel Alliance; it’s usually folks who have succeeded writing new novels in the previous years.

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A review of Scarce Resources by Brendan Detzner

A review of Scarce Resources by Brendan Detzner

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scarce-resourcesScarce Resources, by Brendan Detzner
Self-published (153 pages, $9.99, July 2011)

Brendan Detzner has been reading his stories of unholy compromise, quiet madness and apocalypses both great and small at Chicago open mic events for several years now. His first collection, Scarce Resources, is now available. If you’re not familiar with his work, these eighteen stories are a great overview of what he’s been doing.

The collection opens with “The Black Plague,” a mixture of bio-terror and supernatural horror that shows how much more fearsome life-and-death decisions are when placed in human hands than when left to the whims of nature.

“Dinosaurs,” “Dress Rehearsal” and “Humility” are also set in post-apocalyptic worlds where the drive to continue and rebuild society is either an act of ultimate hope or ultimate denial. I especially liked the playful tone of “Dinosaurs” (opening on a tennis match with the Devil), while “Dress Rehearsal” is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick.

“Music for Scalpel and Prepared Piano,” the shortest piece in the collection, illustrates in less than a hundred words how the path of evil can so easily become a slippery slope. “Quiet” deals with a similar theme, except that the atrocities he describes are sadly real (and still being funded by your tax dollars).

Given the recent death of Amy Winehouse, “The House Rock and Roll Built” may seem a bit more timely than originally intended, while “Veronica” portrays a brutal woman living in a brutal world, finding humanity in a bit of nostalgia.

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Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Nov. 7

Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Nov. 7

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grimmAnother week, another set of new television goodness from the non-cable networks. Seriously, after a year where there’s been very little mainstream science fiction and fantasy on television, it’s nice to see it coming back in such full force. I’m still divided on which of the new shows I most like (though I still probably lean, just a touch, toward Once Upon a Time), though, and both seem to have some potential.

Now on to the show recaps…

Grimm – “Bears Will Be Bears,” Nov. 4 – A breaking and entering goes bad, resulting in one of the intruders becoming a missing person. This bizarre case brings Nick face to face with an ancient race performing a violent rite of passage. (If you can’t guess the fairy tale being invoked from the episode title, you need to turn off your television and read a book of fairy tales. I mean now. Here’s a free one.) Meanwhile, the bludbad Eddie is enlisted to help Nick protect his aunt, but he goes beyond mere comic relief when he lets his inner wolf out on too long a leash.

The best thing about this show, in my opinion, is Eddie, and I’m glad to see that they made such good use of him so quickly out of the gate. I could care less about Nick, to be honest, but that isn’t necessarily a show killer. After all, I was a huge fan of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but the main thing that made 7 years of Buffy’s angst enjoyable was the quality supporting cast: Xander, Giles, Willow, and Oz. Still, Grimm is nowhere near Whedon-esque proportions yet, so I recommend they make Nick a bit more engaging. You can watch the episode online on the official NBC show page or over at Hulu.com.

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A Stoner Fantasy Review: Your Highness

A Stoner Fantasy Review: Your Highness

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yourhighnessSometimes a film comes along which redefines a genre. It brings a new, vibrant life to traditional storytelling structures. It makes you look forward to the new tales that will be inspired by it.

Your Highness is not one of those films.

No, this film is a straight-up satire. It’s from the director of Pineapple Express which was the Seth Rogen and James Franco film that tried to carve out a difficult niche. It was a stoner action film.

Your Highness, on the other hand, is a stoner fantasy film.

And, even on that premise, I don’t think it worked. The problem is that the various stoner film traits – drug use, vulgar language, blatant sexual comments – were applied so thickly that they proved distracting. At each and every turn, it served only one purpose: to completely pull you out of the story and draw attention to the fact that you were watching a film.

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Fiction Review: Neverwinter by R.A. Salvatore

Fiction Review: Neverwinter by R.A. Salvatore

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Long ago, in a time known a college I read my first R.A. Salvatore novel, The Crystal Shard. At that point a great portion of my life was wrapped up in The Forgotten Realms where the novel took place.

Little did I know as I flipped through the very fun, and incredibly D&D-like novel, that a periphery character named Drizzt D’Urdin would go on to be perhaps the most famous D&D character of all time.

So powerful were these books that they actually changed the map of the Forgotten Realms campaign world. My copy, a 1st print, has a map in which Drizzt’s exiled home, Icewind Dale, doesn’t even appear, Salvatore choosing a place beyond the current mythos of the realm.

I finished the Icewind Dale Trilogy and was greatly pleased with all things inside those pages. It was a true D&D adventure and had the makings of something so much larger. I was also taken with the fact that the trilogy was the only one I’ve ever seen in print to feature Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, and Jeff Easley as cover artists in a series.

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APEX #30 and Weird Fiction Review debut

APEX #30 and Weird Fiction Review debut

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issue31_mediumThe latest Apex Magazine is now available; the thirtieth issue is the first by new editor Lynne M. Thomas.  The issue features former editor Catherinne M. Valente’s “The Bread We Eat in Dreams” (who also contributes a farewell essay and a poem) and “The Leavings of the Wolf” by Elizabeth Bear.  This month’s revisited classic story is “The Creeping Thing” by Robert Shearman.  There’s also poetry by Tim Pratt and Bryan Thao Worra and non-fiction by Tansy Rayner Roberts, as well as several interviews.  For those who might fear change, rest assured that the new editor intends to carry on the Apex tradition:

Apex will continue to shove at the edges of the genre until they bleed. I will be publishing transgressive, visceral stories and poems that show us the best and worst of who we are, rendered with style and precision. Expect work outside of your comfort zone: thoughtful, experimental, emotional, and brave. Here you will find stories and poems that show us a heart, sliced out carefully, still beating in the writer’s hands, for all the world to see.

Also, in the one door closes, another opens category, outgoing Werid Tales editor Ann VanderMeer and spouse Jeff (who you may also have heard of) have launched on-line Weird Fiction Review. There’s a combination of fiction, non-fiction, comics, interviews and other, well, weird stuff.  As the editors describe it:

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This site is meant to be an ongo­ing explo­ration into all facets of the weird, in all of its many forms — a kind of non-denominational approach that appre­ci­ates Love­craftbut also Kafka, Angela Carter and Clark Ash­ton Smith, Shirley Jack­son and Fritz Leiber — along with the next gen­er­a­tion of weird writ­ers and inter­national weird. The emphasis will be on non­fic­tion on writ­ers and par­tic­u­lar books, but we will also run fea­tures on weird art, music, and film, as well as occasional fiction.
Behind the Mask: Dr. Phibes – In the Beginning by William Goldstein

Behind the Mask: Dr. Phibes – In the Beginning by William Goldstein

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untitledphibes-4Forty years ago, American International Pictures released The Abominable Dr. Phibes starring the late Vincent Price to movie theaters and Award Books published the novel, Dr. Phibes by the character’s creator, William Goldstein. The novel serves as an intriguing variant to the camp classic film in treating the same story with a great deal of reverence and pathos. The following year Price starred in a hastily-produced sequel for AIP, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and Award Books again published a tie-in novel by the character’s creator which expands upon and corrects a number of the film’s flaws. Flash forward to 2011 and William Goldstein’s new novel, Dr. Phibes: In the Beginning has just been published.

I am not aware of any other creator having returned to his seminal work after such a lengthy passage of time. That said Goldstein had never truly abandoned Phibes. Much like the good doctor’s own quest to revive his beloved wife Victoria, Goldstein has had his own never-ending quest to re-launch the franchise with a new film or a television series. He is a rarity among screenwriters in that his literary efforts do not read like little more than movie treatments or as typical novelizations that slavishly follow the source material.

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World Fantasy Convention in a Really Large Nutshell, Part 2

World Fantasy Convention in a Really Large Nutshell, Part 2

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SHARON SHINN!

(…Being a continuation of Part One…)

It began, as all good days should, with breakfast.

A breakfast with FRIKKIN SHARON SHINN, y’all!

This is how it went down. John O’Neill emails me a few weeks ago. It goes something like this:

Hey Claire!!

Want to have lunch with me and Sharon Shinn?  Come on, I’ll introduce you! – John

And I go something like this:

OH MAH GAWD SHARON SHINN!

I am not going to go on about my thing for Sharon Shinn’s books. It’s just one of those things. That you have. When you think, “Ah! Look! A little novella by Sharon Shinn in this collection! How nice!” And two weeks later you emerge from rereading ALL of her books, with little black suns bursting behind your eyes and a nervous twitch, and you assure people, “No, really. I’m all right.” Anyway, for an in-depth encounter with my Sharon Shinn thing, read my review of her book, Troubled Waters.

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